17 Pieces of Advice for Students Applying for Scholarships

I recently had the pleasure of reading some college scholarship application essays.  The essay question was something like "why did you choose to continue your education at the college you will be attending?"  It was an eye-opening experience because I guess I just didn't realize that even really smart high school students can be really shitty writers.  It also really made me want to find the scholarship application essays that I wrote when I was a senior in high school to see how bad –- or brilliant –- they were.  I guess the fact that I didn't get every scholarship I applied for is probably an indication.

Anyway, here is some candid advice for any kids out there who may be writing scholarship application essays (or even college applications essays/personal statements).

1.  Say something unique.  Most of the essays I read said the exact same thing.  The applicant fell in love with the campus and wants to go to a school where the major he or she thinks he or she wants to have is highly ranked.  These essays were generic enough that, with a couple slight changes, you could interchange pretty much any decent college.  They were boring to read.  The essays that stuck out told an interesting story about themselves and made that fit into why they wanted to go to the school. Put yourself in the shoes of the reader, and ask yourself whether a reader would think your essay is generic.

2.  Don't be afraid to be creative.  One essay started with a first-person narrative of the applicant's struggle in a yoga class, and then she went on to explain how that related to her desire to major in something health-related at the school.  Another applicant talked about how his dad always wanted him to listen to a certain album, but he kept putting it off, and then when he finally listened to it, he loved it.  Then he worked that into why he wanted to go to that college.

3.  Organize your thoughts instead of vomiting them onto a piece of paper.  Your essay should have a theme, and everything should relate to that theme.  Remember those things called topic sentences your English teachers have pounded into your head since grade school?  Use them.  Don't start a paragraph in the middle of a thought or try to combine five different ideas into one paragraph.

4.  Answer the question that is asked.  While your family's financial struggles may affect whether you are eligible for a scholarship that includes a financial need component, you should not include those in your essay when question asks why you chose a particular college.  You didn't decide to go to that college because your dad got laid off and your mom has tons of medical bills.  That's not to say that those facts would never be relevant, but just make sure you can work them into why you're going to that school (or whatever the essay question might be).

5.  There is absolutely no need to regurgitate facts about the college.  You don't have to identify the exact ranking of particular majors, the exact number of Greek houses there are, or the number of volumes the main library houses.  All that shows is that you have the ability to go to the school's website and copy and paste.  Also, it makes it seem like the only thing you care about is ranking.  Would you be applying to this school if their business school was ranked #20 by U.S. News and World Report and not #15, or if it had 35 Greek houses instead of 45?  Probably.  Just say it has a strong business school or a large Greek system.

6.  The essay should be about you, not about the school.  This kind of goes hand-in-hand with the previous point.  A lot of the applicants spent several paragraphs praising the school and spewing facts about the school, but didn't really talk about themselves, other than to say something like "and that's why I want to go here" after the several paragraphs praising the school.  Again, you don't want it to appear that you are only going to a school because the major you think you will have is ranked #12 nationally, even if that is the only reason you're going to the school.

7.  If your hero is an anchor from E! News, that's okay, but you should probably spell "E! News" correctly.  On second thought, you should probably not mention that your hero is an E! News anchor, unless you have something more to say than "Giuliana Rancic is my hero, and I want to be just like her."  That's fine, but maybe explain why she's your hero and explain how the school you will be attending will help you achieve your goal.  Otherwise, I will assume you just want to look emaciated and be on TV.

8.  Don't use clichés.  "From the first time I [stepped on/laid eyes on/saw] campus, I just knew [[insert name of institution] was the perfect place for me/I was destined to go to [insert name of institution]/I would not need to look at any other colleges/I was home]."  I was amazed at how many of the essays had this sentence or something almost exactly like it. That was usually my cue to stop reading.

9.  A preposition is something you shouldn't end a sentence with.  If you don't understand that last sentence, then you should not be writing any more essays.

10.  You should use commas.  You see young lad or lass when you don't use commas it can sometimes be unclear what you're trying to say because many times your sentences tend to run on forever and they might confuse the reader even though with a comma or two they would not have that problem and would not require the reader to reread your sentence six times.

11.  Don't make outrageous statements like, "ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of being a financial analyst."  Seriously, someone wrote that.  There is no child on the face of the Earth who has ever dreamed of being a financial analyst.

12.  Don't refer to your parents as "mommy" and "daddy."  Unless of course, you don't want a scholarship.

13.  When the essay is supposed to be more than a couple sentences, breaking it up into paragraphs is a good idea.  Several essays were a page long and one paragraph.  The applicants may as well have written "I never learned how to write properly" over and over.

14.  Don't use semicolons.  Ever.

15.  Proofread it.  For the love of God, proofread it!  Because every sentence should have a subject, a predicate, and a fucking punctuation mark at the end of it.

16.  Have someone else proofread it.  Your English teacher would be a good choice.  That way, you won't have an essay that capitalizes the word "campus" for some reason (and inconsistently, at that), uses the word "earnest" six times on one page, uses the word "Universities" (also capitalized for no reason) instead of "university's," or contains any semicolons.

17.  Don't wait until the last minute to write it.  Maybe the problem was that the applicants procrastinated and then threw something together the day before the deadline, so they didn't have time to think about, revise, or proofread their essays.  If nothing else, the fact that you aren't getting a scholarship because of your mediocre essay should be a lesson, because you definitely aren't going to be getting As on college essays if you wait until the last night to write them.  But then again, you don't need to write anything if you're majoring in accounting at the #16 ranked undergraduate accounting program in the nation, right?

No go forth and get money.